


Oh, sweet death, she calls me away from your embrace

by Amymel86



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, One Shot, Sort Of, Time Travel, but not for long, can you see where I'm going with this?, day 1: songs, dead!Jon, jonsa: a dream of spring event, mortician!Sansa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amymel86/pseuds/Amymel86
Summary: “Hello, Jon Snow,” she says to the dead body in front of her, “my name is Sansa Stark and I’m going to be looking after you tonight. Ok?... Ok.”Sansa’s sure that not all morticians talk to their dead, but there’s always been something that made her feel like just silently touching them, dressing them, fixing their hair and applying make up to their pale skin without so much as an introduction was a tad rude.*****Entry for Day 1 of the Jonsa: A Dream of Spring event





	Oh, sweet death, she calls me away from your embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vivilove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivilove/gifts), [Titania_Queen_of_the_Fairies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Titania_Queen_of_the_Fairies/gifts).



> Hiiii! Please accept this small offering for the Jonsa A Dream of Spring event!
> 
> Gifted to Vivi and Tanya for just generally being awesome!

Quiet. Sansa loves the quiet of working late. Not that any of her clients are ever up for much idle chit-chat anyway.

Sighing to herself and putting on her blue medical gloves, Sansa pulls her rolling stool up to her worktable so she can begin. She takes a glance at the paperwork and the photo of her client. “Hello, Jon Snow,” she says to the dead body in front of her, “my name is Sansa Stark and I’m going to be looking after you tonight. Ok?... Ok.”

Sansa’s sure that not all morticians talk to their dead, but there’s always been something that made her feel like just silently touching them, dressing them, fixing their hair and applying make up to their pale skin without so much as an introduction was a tad rude.

And her business – small as it was- is built on her own respect for people’s losses and treating the flesh that comes to her as carefully as she treats the emotions of the families who hire her services.

Sansa takes pride in her work. She knows very well the ache that never leaves when a loved one moves on. Saying goodbye should be special. It should mean something. And every goodbye that Sansa has had a hand in making happen has meant something to her.

“Let’s see what we have here,” she smiles to herself, reaching over to tuck some of Jon’s hair behind his ear. He’s handsome – even with ash-grey, lifeless skin. Sansa stares at him, trying to imagine what he had been like before The Stranger had come for him too soon. _Murdered,_ she remembers, _a mugging gone wrong, multiple stabs._ There are small laughter lines at the corners of his eyes, barely visible. He wasn’t wearing a smile in the photo his mother had provided – well, not one wide enough to cause crow’s feet anyway. Sansa thinks he’s probably one of those who is incapable of giving a false smile; that when he grins, it probably lights up his face with how genuine it is.

Lightly running her fingers over the scruff on his jaw and then checking with the photograph, Sansa decides his beard could do with a trim. Nothing drastic, just to neaten it up. His hair too. She’ll do that first before getting her bag of tricks out and applying the make up that will hopefully make it look as though Jon Snow is just peacefully asleep and not taken from this world too soon.

“Ok, Jon,” she announces as she’s standing from her stool, “lets give you a little trim so you look your best for tomorrow.” Sansa takes a moment to appraise his full lips, enviable in their plumpness even in their sickly shade. “I bet you were a real lady’s man, huh?” she asks with a smile. “Or a man’s man,” she adds, shrugging her shoulders.

Sansa takes yet another look at the photograph of Jon that Mrs Snow had given her for reference. His eyes were grey and framed with long thick lashes as dark as the curls on his head. Those were enviable too, Sansa thinks.

It’s always sad when Sansa has younger bodies to work on and doubly sad when she’s dressing someone ready for their goodbyes so suddenly like Jon here. He should be out on adventures, furthering his career or meeting that special someone to share his life with.

Humming to herself, Sansa leans over to push a curl from his forehead. “Do you mind if I sing while I work, Jon?” she asks the dead body laid out on her table. She doesn’t wait for an answer and only plunders on with her all-time favourite that reminded her of her dear Mama and Papa:

 _“High in the halls of the kings who are gone_  
Jenny would dance with her ghosts  
The ones she had lost and the ones she had found  
And the ones who had loved her the most”

Sansa’s workroom is small and she only needs to turn around to the cabinet behind her to retrieve the clippers and hairdressing scissors. She does that now, still continuing her song, her voice echoing in the night-time emptiness.

 _“The ones who'd been gone for so very long_  
She couldn't remember their names  
They spun her around on the damp old stones  
Spun away all her sorrow and pain

_“And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to-“_

Her song ends on a gasp and the hair clippers and scissors clattering to floor once she’d turned back around.

Jon Snow – the man whose beard she was about to trim, the man whose hair she was about to neaten up, the man who _was dead_ a few seconds ago, was sat up on her work table, head turned to face Sansa, and staring at her with wide, fearful eyes.

 _“Oh my Gods!”_ she shrieks, taking a step back until she’s pressed against the cupboards mounted on the wall behind her, heart near enough pounding out of her chest.

No-longer-dead-Jon-Snow furrows his no-longer-dead brow in utter frightful confusion. “Sansa?” he asks, seemingly unsure of absolutely everything. Sansa can’t blame him as she’s not quite sure of what she’s seeing either. She whimpers as her name being uttered by his no-longer-dead lips nonetheless.

Had he heard her when she was jabbering on at him with her nonsense. Is that how he knows her name? Sansa’s quite sure that she hasn’t met Jon Snow before he died… did he die at all?... in her expert experience, people who have died tended to stay dead and not sit up and talk to her while still on her Gods-damned worktable!

Jon looks down at himself in his medical gown that Sansa’s clients get put in before they’re dressed for their funeral service. “What…” he squints around the room, up at the lights and down at the stainless-steel table he had been laid upon. “Where am I?”

His voice is gruff and northern, rough as though he’d just awoken with a hangover.

“You-you,” Sansa stutters, “you _died!”_

He looks back to her then, still confused. And yet again, Sansa can’t say she blames him. “I-“ Jon looks as though he remembers something then, his eyes unfocussed as his mind sorts though broken bits of memory. “They stabbed me,” Sansa nods, that’s right, that’s what Mrs Snow had told her and what the paperwork said. She only tends to deal with the aesthetics of the bodies she deals with and since Jon would be wearing a suit in his casket, she’d not yet seen his wounds. “My brothers,” he continues, remembering more, “I was going to save Arya from the Boltons.”

An ice-cold shiver trickles down her spine. Sansa’s pretty damned sure she hadn’t mentioned anything about her sister while she’d believed Jon to be dead. How in all the Seven Hells did he know about Arya?! And what’s this about ‘the Boltons’?!

“Sansa,” he’s looking to her again, “where are we? I-I was _just_ at Castle Black. Now I’m here.”

_Castle Black? The old ruins way up north?_

“I think we should get you to the other room,” Sansa says, deciding to move the no-longer-dead man to somewhere more comfortable like the plump sofa in her office. “We can get some coffee in you and you’ll feel much better,” she tells him, reaching an arm out to help steady him as he jumps down from her table. He gives her a curious look before grabbing hold of her in a tight hug that knocks the air clean out of her lungs.

“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see any of you again,” he whispers into her hair. “The last I’d heard you’d disappeared at Joffrey’s wedding and no-one had seen you since.”

 _Oh my._ Sansa’s heart lurches, this poor guy is obviously very confused because she doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Sansa decides to return the hug and wraps her arms around his frame where he seems to be quite literally clinging to her. She can feel him release a shuddering breath so she squeezes him a slight bit tighter to try and offer some form of comfort. He’s warmer than he had been on her table.

“Your mother will be so, so pleased to know you’re okay,” she tells his shoulder.

No-longer-dead-Jon-Snow leans back to look her in the eye. He looks even more confused then he had a minute or so ago. “I don’t have a mother,” he tells her with a shake of his head. Sansa’s about to protest when he continues on, “you know that. Father never told me who my mother was. Ned Stark was the only parent I ever knew.”

Right at that moment, Sansa can feel every drop of blood drain from her face as she becomes rather woozy in Jon Snow’s surprisingly strong arms. “R-right,” she stammers, hoping that she will be able to find a stiff drink in her office once they get there. Something tells her that a mug of coffee isn’t going to fix this one.


End file.
